It isn't that they had no explanation but it is that the explanation was less "because magic" and more "because that is just how things work". The picture of the tiger 'was' the tiger.
Okay. Then why did you say that the hunter-gatherers were free of magic mumbo-jumbo? That kind of sounds like magic mumbo-jumbo to me. Saying that a picture of a thing is, in some ways, the same as the real thing sounds hella mystical. And isn't that kind of stuff, things like harming a creature by harming an image of the creature, the exact kind of magic that the anti-flashy school is promoting? If you can curse an enemy by constructing a little doll of him, maybe tying some of his hair on it, and then prodding it with pins, that means you're making a serious effort rather than just spamming spells like some kind of larper. If you add the requirement that the doll be constructed in a particular way, you're also conducting obscure rituals. What kind of magic do you even want?
I think the explanation "because magic" mostly comes up in contexts where the magician knows a trick that anyone could learn and keeps it a secret. You know, like stage magic. This can really extend to any system of magic. Maybe magic is fakey-fake bullshit, and the "wizards" are just working miracles with chemistry and sleight of hand, and pretending to have godlike powers for prestige and money. Maybe anyone can cause fireballs to appear by twiddling their fingers in a particular way, but the only people who know that are the mad cultists of the Esoteric Order of Oglogoth. That's the "accessibility of magic" question again, and really more of an in-world social issue than a function of what is
possible.
Which history is this?
Human history. Where powers were either taught or that everyone learned them. The idea of magic being exclusive was rather uncommon to my recollection.
It was easy to manipulate luck, events, or even people with magic.
Merlin's dad, for instance
That is fiction that is different.
Ah, I see. I didn't get what you were talking about since I mentally file those under "superstition" rather than "magic".
I don't think the distinction between outright fiction and "serious" folklore is that important. Geoffrey of Monmouth's audience presumably found it plausible that someone whose dad was a demon would have superpowers. And with medieval Christianity in full swing, they presumably believed in demons. You could make dark pacts with the devil, but that was
evil and certainly not something that everyone did. And before the demons and the witches, there were elves and such, who were also magic in a way that normal folk could not imitate. And shamans, who knew things that other people didn't, and could travel to the spirit world to talk to the ancestors or whatever. Those guys were mere humans, but still had a status above other humans, because they had special powers that others didn't. I think the idea of magic being exclusive was pretty damn pervasive.
What's your definition of magic?
Skill, knowledge, and ability based upon an abstract application of forces or what would be considered so today.
To clarify, I would assume that something like drawing a bowstring, while an
application of forces, would be insufficiently abstract to be magic? Dunno, that doesn't sound that different from my definition. It's only magic if you can't see what's going on. Am I completely misreading this?
My argument was against the idea of creating barriers to magic based on chance or on incredibly arduous tasks (beating down a dragon). There are ways to have easy access to magic without having excessive access to magic.
That's more a gameplay question. Beating down dragons is traditionally a sure-fire way to get the best stuff. Anyone can buy a sword, but if you fight a dragon in a game, and find a sword in his stash of dragon loot, you can be pretty damn sure that it's a cooler sword than what you can in the sword shop. Then there are all the suits of armour made of dragon scales and so on. If magic is really powerful, it should be hard to get, because that is how character growth works. You can't just
hand the player the best stuff.
DF does many things differently, of course. Instead of any kind of progression, there's just this wide open sandbox, with all the equipment strewn around randomly. I think this is more because it's not done yet than any conscious design choice.
Incidentally, if magic
isn't powerful, it might still make sense to force you to beat up dragons to get it. Players are going to value it a lot more if they feel they really worked for it. Like, if the sword you find in the dragon's stash is functionally identical to all other swords but has some cosmetic difference, players are going to treasure it because it reminds them of how they beat that dragon.
Mostly I am trying to argue that magic doesn't need counter balances (Wizards can't use armor, magic must be really rare, magicians can't use weapons, magic has a chance to blow you up) it just needs to come out in a form that works with the game where any counter balances come from just the logic of magic rather then as a way to keep the game balanced.
Basically that instead of trying to balance magic that doesn't exist. We should instead try to introduce balanced magic.
What's the difference? If you're trying to create a balanced something, isn't thinking about which things are too powerful and making up counterbalances exactly what you are doing?
And what does "logic of the magic" mean? "Counterbalances" exist
by definition to keep the game balanced. What I'm getting from this is that we should just invent a flawless magic system
ex nihilo, and if it has any balance problems then we have failed forever, and any attempts to change the system to make it more balanced are ruining some kind of magical vision. What are you really trying to say?
